Incidentally, that DFW shot was taken on my return trip home from Oklahoma City in Summer 2007. That was the last time I've flown on an airliner.
Of course, I am just talking only about airliners. The Pensacola shot doesn't show the two naval air stations within 15 miles loaded with hundreds of navy jets, props, and helos who make that 5pm departure and arrival push far more interesting!
I was working a flight of T-34s outbound from Whiting at 5500 feet when I got a surprise handoff from Jacksonville Center: an F/A-18 Hornet screaming along VFR at 4500 feet.
The Hornet's route would take him directly under the T-34s. They were my only traffic and the T-34 flight lead sounded thrilled to be in his cockpit. I figured I may as well give him some added excitement and point out the Hornet, since there's usually not much in that neck of the woods other than, well, other T-34s. Besides, they were only 1000 feet apart vertically so a traffic call was in order.
Me: "Blackbird 123 and flight, traffic, twelve o'clock, four miles, southwest-bound, 4500, F-18 Hornet." BB123: (excitedly) "Oh! Roger! Searching for traffic." Hornet: (chimes in) "Radar." Me: "Blackbird 123, do you have him in sight?" BB123: "Negative." Hornet: (somewhat exasperated) "Approach, I've got radar contact on him." Me: (thinks about it) "Errr... Oh! Hornet, roger."
It was pretty amusing to hear an airplane say "radar contact" regarding another aircraft. I guess I just don't work too many aircraft that have their own onboard Hughes/Raytheon fire control radar suite.
Now, things would have gotten real interesting if a moment later the Hornet driver yelled out, "Fox three!" :)
It’s only 8:30am and I’ve already had two "firsts".
Numero Uno
I’m working the Whiting departures this morning. Standard operation, the usual bunch of VFR Navy T-34 departures heading out into the beautiful, clear morning sky. Multi-ship flights, solos, dual trainers. Nothing out of the ordinary. The push has died down some and I have about four aircraft on my frequency.
My facility manager is standing next to me and we’re discussing how my training is going on the Pensacola bank. Things are quiet.
Due to the light traffic at that time, there are only three scopes active, one for each of our Class C airports. Each of those single scopes is responsible for all the airspace relating to its respective bank. I'm working the NSE scope.
Suddenly, the ARTS on my scope goes down. At that second I have my head turned so I don’t see it when it flicks off. My manager notices it and speaks up.
I look back. All the alpha-numerics on the scope are gone. Datablocks. Departure tab lists. Activations. They’re bye-bye, their ghosts fading into blackness. All I’ve got are my primary targets and my map. A quick glance around the room reveals that the other five scopes in the room that feed off our Whiting radar are blank as well.
Well, shit.
I immediately crank up my primaries to the max. Bright slashes glow on my scope now, each representing an aircraft. Our Whiting VFR departures are written down on traffic count sheets. I examine my targets, review the “flick” in my mind, and correlate them mentally to the call signs on my sheet. I’m not quite in “radar contact lost” territory yet. The good thing is they’re all VFR anyway and therefore ultimately responsible for their own separation.
For the non-controllers out there, here's a little before and after so you can picture what I'm seeing (or not seeing):
At least I didn't lose my entire radar. This is similar to what air traffic control used to look like, back in the day. No datablocks, no transponders, nothing. If you've got targets of some kind, you could work - if you can tell who each target is. At this point I'm considering checking Ebay for some secondhand shrimp boats.
In the meantime, one of the techs bursts in from the system room. A computer hardware swap went awry and reset the Whiting radar's hardware. It should be back up quickly. Cool. Tech knows about the issue and they’re working on it.
While he’s telling us this, our Flight Data person has called up Whiting tower and tells them to stop departures. We've already got a few birds in the air. We don't need more at the moment. Doing that gives us time to figure out the next step.
Okay, so I know who’s who, what’s wrong, and that it’s being worked on. Now what?
We have two ASR-11 radar sites in our airspace: one about 15 miles north of Whiting field, and another located directly at Pensacola Regional. The issue took out the ARTS for the Whiting radar, but the Pensacola radar is just fine. Both are redundant systems and either one can operate the entirety of our airspace.
At the moment we lost the Whiting radar feed, we were left with this:
If it had been a single Whiting scope that went down, no big deal. Scopes die like any other piece of hardware. Just slide over to another Whiting scope, key up the frequencies, and keep working.
But with the actual Whiting radar being down, it's not that simple. While we have six working scopes in the room that run off the Pensacola radar, I can’t just slide over to any scope and just pull up the frequencies. Out of our twelve total scopes, only five scopes have the required radios ("NSE" in the radio list), and four of those are unusable since they run off the Whiting radar! The remaining one is the Pensacola East sector, which is currently manned and is unaffected by the outage since it runs off the Pensacola radar.
So, the controller at the Pensacola East sector – which runs off the Pensacola radar – has now pulled up my targets and is seeing the aircraft datablocks just fine. He’s also standing by to key up the frequencies if needed. The East sector is the "mother sector" for all of the sectors in the house, so it has all frequencies for the PNS, NPA, and NSE banks available.
In short, we can see the airplanes clearly, and we can talk to them. Good. If I can’t get fully back online, all the East sector needs to do is type a keyboard command and my traffic will be combined with his.
This gives us time to enact the next phase. As part of our system redundancy, we have the ability to reset all scopes in the room to use either of the radar sites. It just takes another keyboard command to implement it. Once entered, the scopes swab over to whichever sensor is needed automatically. After that’s done, all you need to do is reset the radar maps on each scope to center them on the new radar.
Resetting the Whiting sectors to the Pensacola radar would bring us back online as such:
Luckily, as we’re about to switch sensors on the dark scopes, the Whiting radar comes back. Huzzah! After that, everything works great. No problems. Naturally, the pilots never knew anything about it.
Overall, not really a big deal. All of this took place over maybe two minutes. That’s one of the great things about redundant systems. We were back to normal in no time. Even if tech hadn’t been able to fix the original issue, once the scopes were switched to the Pensacola radar we’d have been just fine.
Even if it was a worst case scenario and the Whiting radar scopes were completely knocked out, we have options. The East controller could physically move over to the unused West sector. Since the West is the companion sector for the East, it has radios with the East frequencies. Then, the Whiting controller - a.k.a. me - could take over the East scope and just key up only the Whiting frequencies there. So, we’d have the West scope acting as the East, and the East scope acting as the Whiting, and both would be running off the Pensacola radar.
It would look like the following. It’d be strange, but it would work.
I’d never seen anything like this before. Not in training. Not ever. Unlike my flying days, where you’re constantly reviewing emergency and fire checklists, there is no checklist for this. You just have to be flexible and figure it out. After it happened, I was asking my coworkers a ton of questions about best practices for those kinds of situations.
There were several things I could have done better. For instance, I should have jumped faster on the “stop departures” call to Whiting tower to keep them from adding more to the fun. Thankfully, the experienced CPC on Flight Data took care of that.
As they say, a pilot’s license is a “license to learn.” The same thing applies to ATC certifications. There’s no better teacher than new experiences.
Numero Dos
Now for the (very) anti-climactic second "first": primary target-only radar identification using turns. Woo hoo! Same session as the radar outage too. Packed full of fun with primary targets....
A Forestry Service aircraft calls me up departing an uncontrolled field. As I'm typing in his callsign to issue a squawk, he reports that his transponder is out and he wants to land at Pensacola Regional to get it looked at. Of course, his current stated position and heading put him southbound, right in the middle of a flock of other VFR targets. He could be any one of them.
Some legalities to consider. He's a primary target only, and he wants to enter the Class C airspace containing Pensacola Regional.
The FAR's say the following:
Sec. 91.215 - ATC transponder and altitude reporting equipment and use. ... (b) All airspace. Unless otherwise authorized or directed by ATC, no person may operate an aircraft in the airspace described in paragraphs (b)(1) through (b)(5) of this section, unless that aircraft is equipped with an operable coded radar beacon transponder [...] and that aircraft is equipped with automatic pressure altitude reporting equipment having a Mode C capability[...]
(1) All aircraft. In Class A, Class B, and Class C airspace areas; ]....]
Without a transponder or Mode C, he doesn't meet the standard equipment requirements for Class C.
However, the end of FAR Sec. 91.215 has an exception:
(d) ATC authorized deviations. Requests for ATC authorized deviations must be made to the ATC facility having jurisdiction over the concerned airspace within the time periods specified as follows: [...] (2) For operation of an aircraft with an inoperative transponder to the airport of ultimate destination, including any intermediate stops, or to proceed to a place where suitable repairs can be made or both, the request may be made at any time.
According to the rules, since he's landing at Pensacola in order to get his transponder fixed, he's allowed into Class C without prior notification.
So, how does one figure out which target he is? ATC can radar identify primary target-only aircraft via three methods, as specified by FAA Order 7110.65.
Departing aircraft: Identify an aircraft within 1 mile of the runway departure end.
Position correlation: The aircraft tells you where he is, and you simply look for a target there. "Approach, Cessna 123, we're five miles south of Milton airport."
Identifying turns: Direct and observe an aircraft to make a turn of at least 30 degrees.
#1 wouldn't work, since he's already airborne. #2 would be feasible, if not for the eight other targets in the vicinity of his reported position. So, that leaves me with just #3.
I’d studied it a while ago, knew the phraseology, knew what to look for, but I’d just never actually done it. The 7110.65 requires a minimum of a 30 degree turn. I choose to give him a 90 degree right turn since A) it's easier to spot and B) due to his reported southbound heading and position, it would point him at Pensacola Regional, his destination.
"FFXX, this will be a turn for radar identification. Turn 90 degrees right."
All of the other targets are milling about, but I spot one making a definite sharp turn to the west, breaking out from the others. No question it's him. Our radar and ARTS can tag and track primary targets, so I type “FSXX”, slew on the primary target, and press "Enter" . It tags up with his callsign. “Radar contact."
I write up a strip, scribble "Transonder Inop" on it, and pass it on, then inform the next controller via landline that FSXX is a primary only target. Handoff. Switch. All done on my end. Not much to it. Surprisingly painless.
So that was two valuable learning experiences on the job, and both within an hour of punching in. An interesting start for what turned out to be an interesting day.
I just watched a couple of excellent documentaries.
The first was One Six Right. It's a beautifully filmed documentary that specifically relates the history of California's Van Nuys Airport, but generally relates the importance of an airport to its surrounding area. It's told largely through interviews with pilots, historians, controllers, and busness owners who rely on the airport. The cinematography is fantastic, including perfectly composed shots of warbirds, biplanes, aerobatic aircraft, bizjets, and more. I had the most serious case of rentaplaneandgoflying-itis ever after seeing this.
It's a counter to all the NIMBY people and real estate developers who view general aviation airports as either a noise nuisance or a waste of valuable land that can be used for, I don't know, a strip mall. The irony is that if either of those groups succeeds in killing a GA airport, they'll likely be the first to complain about increasing delays at the larger airports in their area. Well, remember those corporate jets, police / medical / TV helicopters, flight schools, and other essential aviation services? They need to go somewhere.
Opening Sequence:
(Man, I love the sound of that P-51's V-12 Merlin)
On First Solos:
Second was Speed and Angels, a documentary that came out last year about two Navy pilots wanting to become F-14 Tomcat fighter pilots. Each pilot has their own specific issues. One is a woman, which of course invites all of the "man's world" stigmas. The other is a guy whose callsign is "Faceshot", named as such because he was shot in the face as a teenager and recovered, but now has trouble convincing doctors he is medically qualified to fly. It follows both pilots through their dogfight training, carrier qualification training, and eventual deployment to Iraq.
I found the movie quite inspirational without being jingoistic - it's not anti-war or pro-war. It just tells an honest, straightforward story about two people fighting against the odds and succeeding.
So, I keep plugging away at the Pensacola bank. Ups and downs. Last week was good, this one, not so much. Tomorrow and next week will be better. I know it.
Aside from that, this week had its usual assortment of regular traffic plus the odd "funky thing" that spices up the norm.
Yesterday I had a couple of PEL's (Precautionary Emergency Landings) in a single session. Both involved Whiting T-34s. The first was a flight of two who departed, and whose wingman developed a stuck gear issue. They split up the flight, I issued the wingman his own squawk, and both came back into land.
The second was a T-34 with an unresponsive power lever (I believe that's their prop pitch control). Fuel and souls on board, a heads up call to the tower, and a point out the East sector later, he got in ok. Both were pretty much non-events. The worst part about emergency situations is trying to talk around the other pilots. This second guy's trying to tell me what's going on, and in the meantime other T-34s are stepping all over him.
I had a couple Navy helos go NORDO on me in a bad spot, the left base to Runway 32. The issue is that South Whiting's pattern borders Eglin's restricted areas and gunnery ranges. If we lose comms with an aircraft and he flies too far east, he actually stands a fairly significant chance of being blown from the sky by an AC-130 or whatever they have going on out there. Obviously, we call Eglin and get a point out. It's just not a good feeling watching our guy fly eastbound into alien airspace.
Note to the Whiting pilots: If you guys are doing a practice approach, execute your climbout, and then don't hear from us for 10, 15 or 20 miles, please check your radios or try reaching us on another frequency. You should be talking with us right after you make your turnout.
It's perfectly acceptable to call us up on a different freq and say "Hey, we couldn't reach you on [original freq]." Whether it was an equipment failure on our end or a bad button push on the cockpit radio stack, it doesn't matter. We just want to know you're communicating with us.
The Great Piper Migration of 2009 happened today. I was working Flight Data when the printer started spitting out a ton of very similar overflight flight plans. They were all Piper Warriors, all had very similar sounding callsigns (N642FT, N606FT, etc.), and all were flying from Melbourne to New Orleans Lakefront. In the end, we had something like 25 or 30 of them, all proposed at 4500 feet.
Then the weather started getting bad. The ceilings dropped. Then the altitude amendments started coming in. 6500. 3500. 2500. Some of the strips had four or five altitude amendments. Then, because of the altitude issues, Eglin wasn't sure which frequency to put them on.
Additional complications followed. All of these aircraft were running more than half an hour behind what was expected on the strip, so they began to time out of the system. As we tried to hand the first wave off to Mobile, they wouldn't flash. The flight plans had apparently timed out so we had to make manual handoffs. To try and prevent that from happening to the rest of them, I called Eglin approach up and asked them to update the progress of each flight plan to prevent them from timing out. It seemed to work better after that.
I ended up Googling a couple of the callsigns. Turns out they belonged to a flight school called Florida Institute of Technology, located in Melbourne. I hope they had a good time in the Big Easy. They certainly made our early afternoon interesting.
Here's their fleet. Practically every plane on that ramp flew through our airspace yesterday.
This bummed me out. It's a couple of months old now, but I hadn't heard about this until tonight.
Redmond, Washington-based ACES Studio, the Microsoft-owned internal group behind the venerable Microsoft Flight Simulator series, has been heavily affected by Microsoft's ongoing job cuts.
Development sources have told Gamasutra that a large portion of the dev house's staff has been let go - with multiple reports indicating that the entire Flight Simulator team has been axed.
The Microsoft-owned Flight Simulator is possibly the game industry's longest-running continuous franchise.
I've been playing Flight Simulator in its various forms since I can remember. It followed me throughout so many phases of my life.
As a child, I played the original version on my dad's Apple II computer in all its monochrome glory.
During my teenage years and the era of Flight Simulator 4, I had a ball swooping around Chicago's Meigs Field and exploring the seemingly endless polygonal world.
FS 2004: A Century of Flight opened up a whole new world of flying for me, with its mix of detailed vintage and modern aircraft. I still have the little metal DC-3 they released with it on the first day. Alaskan bush flying, helicopter piloting, airline routes - I tried it all.
The morning of my first real flying lesson five years ago, I remember creating a custom session - a C172 departing Tamiami airport in Miami - and flying the heck out of it. When I got in the real 172SP's cockpit a few hours later, I already knew where everything was and what most of it did.
FS X Deluxe Edition was in my hands the day it came out. Along with my college classes and my consumption of everything ATC, its online ATC multiplayer component gave me my first taste of controlling live traffic piloted by live people. It definitely helped with my phraseology and helped me build situational awareness.
To help myself out with my Virtual ATC-ing, I actually designed my own Strip Bay software to work in conjunction with FSX. One of the FS X developers mentioned it in his blog way back when.
Flight Simulator wasn't just a game. It was an institution, that rare piece of software that was both entertaining and a learning tool that opened up the fun and demanding nature of flight to everyone - from the novice going through the flight school tutorials to the virtual heavy driver flying the Level-D 767.
It will be missed by this particular Flying Penguin.
"The weather was rolling in hard over Pensacola, Fla. A sky full of U.S. Navy training aircraft was struggling to get down before the worst of it smothered their airfield. Departing cross-country flights were making a break for it, fleeing the oncoming front. Pilot-requested deviations were the order of the day as military trainers tunneled under and over the building cumulonimbus.
For me, the FAA trainee radar controller seated before an aging scope, the darkening skies and mounting unpredictability brewed up the perfect conditions for my first checkride."
Opening excerpt from "A Controller's Checkride" IFR Magazine March 2009 issue
My first-ever published non-fiction article in a national publication. 1800 words (plus graphics) detailing what it was like to get my first radar certification as an air traffic controller. This was a huge step for me as an aspiring writer, and I thank the terrific folks at IFR Magazine for contacting me and offering me the opportunity to write for them. It was a great experience.
The magazine's web site is: IFR-Magazine.com. They don't have an online version of the full article, but I know a lot of you guys and girls are pilots who either subscribe or might be around flight schools that have copies around. For the controllers out there, the mag opened up my eyes to a lot of things that go on in the cockpit, both from a technical and psychological standing. Good stuff.
Yesterday was a good day. I'm feeling much more confident about things.
I had three training sessions in a row yesterday. The first, I worked both the East and West sectors combined. Basically, the entire northern 2/3 of our airspace was under my control, and I actually had a lot of fun with it. The ceiling was dropping steadily all day, so I got some IFR and marginal VFR experience in the mix. I handled everything pretty well, I think. I kept very good control over my traffic and my coordination. I didn't fall behind, even when I was seeing things that I had never seen before. I'm pleased.
The second session was just the West side, and the third had me working the P/AR sector - the final sector. It's a small area of airspace that extends 15 miles along the Pensacola Regional final and owns up to 3000 feet. Normally, the P/AR is combined up into the East and West sectors, but for a change of pace our supervisor had it split off on its own. It forces the rest of the room to think differently when feeding any aircraft to the Pensacola airport. It was actually a pretty cool exercise.
I also spoke with my supervisor a bit concerning the skill check he gave me last week (which ultimately led to my "Frustrated" post). A lot of what we discussed revolved around what I mentioned in that post: my speed and scan need improvement. Once I let those slide, I start getting behind and getting into trouble. I placed a lot of emphasis on those yesterday and it paid off well. I stayed ahead of the game.
One of the things he also mentioned was that the level of traffic I was working during that skill check could have been handled by a CPC, but that CPC would have been on the very edge of needing an assist position. It made me feel better knowing that even a CPC would have had a difficult time with that workload and complexity. It wasn't just busy for me, but plain old busy for anyone who would have been working it.
After the training sessions, I worked the Whiting NAS sectors a couple of times on my own. It was more of the usual squirrelly IFR stuff: lots of IFR pickups, aircraft deviating all over the place, a stack of holding aircraft the full height of my airspace, and VFR On Top departures needing to climb to 10,000 feet to cancel IFR. In addition, one of my neighboring sectors gave me several bad feeds that had me reworking my plan several times. That particular controller - a CPC - seems to make a habit of passing on problems to other sectors with the attitude, "let 'em figure it out." They're a cool person outside of the radar room, but not exactly someone who I want to emulate very much at a radar scope. Regardless, I just made it work and everyone got where they needed to be.
Good things continued after I got off work. My wife found out her work schedule change request went through. She and I only have one car between us, and the public transportation system in this city is very limited. I have access to buses at the airport, but she works out in the boonies. So, the car situation is constantly being juggled.
Her new schedule gives us a lot more time together since she'll be getting home much earlier now. Mon and Tues, I still have to hang out at the airport terminal cafe for a couple of hours before I go into work, but not nearly as long as I used. They've got free Wi-Fi and it gives me some time to catch up on writing, phone calls, and e-mails. On Thursday I can ride my bike home. I don't mind the latter at all - it's 4.5 miles and good exercise. It helps combat the effects of a very sedentary job.
Besides, we don't have a gym at our place like Miami Tower does. :)
The only downside to yesterday was my laptop dying on me. It seems either the power adapter or the power plug on the laptop itself went kaput. I have most of my writing and music projects on an external drive, so those aren't affected. I really don't want to have to buy a new laptop at this time, but if it's dead I will definitely do that. While I've got a kick-ass machine at home, I use my laptop everywhere - at work (no, I'm not responsible for the data breach...), the airport, on the back patio, at restaurants, and pretty much anywhere else that has a power plug. Everything depends on how much it will cost to replace it versus repair it. If it comes to replacement, I'll likely get a Toshiba for about $700.
To put it bluntly, I'm getting a little tired of getting my butt kicked.
I've been training on our main Pensacola bank for about six months now. It's usually divided up between two scopes: East and West. The West side is a wide open expanse without much in it. It only really sees some action when we're on runway 8. The East side, however, is the most screwed up, chopped up, and overly used sector in the house.
I'm doing fine on the West sector. And when I get some pro-time on the Whiting sectors, I feel good. I know the airspace, the traffic, all that, and I just work it. I keep up with it well, because I work off of instinct. I don't have to think too much about what my traffic needs - I just do it.
The East sector, however, is deceptive. This is one of those where if you think you have enough time to do something...you really don't. You can literally have zero airplanes one moment, and the next you're covered up with 15 airplanes doing 15 different things and going down in flames. All the stuff you thought you had time to do... you don't anymore. You're constantly on the land lines with Jacksonville Center and Eglin Approach, and on the internal lines with every other sector in the room. It feels like your attention is pulled a hundred ways at once,.
I think my problem boils down to one word: speed.
When I sit down and it's slow, and then it gets busy, I'm having trouble ramping up my pace to match the traffic. It's like I over think things too much, and it slows me down.
Basically, I know what to do with the aircraft. I know my rules, my airspace, and my procedures. I just don't do it fast enough. I know that AirTran needs to be turned and descended for a visual to 35. I know that Navy trainer needs to be sent direct to the Saufley VOR for holding. I know that departing Gulf Flight needs to be climbed and handed off to the Jax Center. I know I need to make that point out to the West sector. But I think about it too much. I dwell a little too long on each decision.
Of course that wastes time. Then I start playing catch up, and my scan goes to hell. I get distracted trying to put out one potential fire, and miss another situation. A frequency switch. A traffic call. A point out. An aircraft that's unexpectedly changed direction. (All of these happened in the last session.)
And it's frustrating. There are times where I get up and want to go play some drums - hard. I'm just so annoyed. I know I can do it better, and I, well, just don't sometimes. I don't why. I'm trying to figure it out. I just hate that feeling when you get up and feel like you screwed up bad.
Everything about ATC is trust. The pilots trust you to get them where they're going and keep them out of harm's way. Your coworkers in the room around you rely on you to do your job well and not set them up with situations they need to fix. We're all supposed to be working as a team and when I don't do my part well enough, I feel like I let people down. That's the worst part of it for me: I don't like disappointing people who are relying on me.
So, I play some drums. Play some guitar. Chill out. And I get back in and hack away at the training again. Each time is better, not perfect, but edging towards that finish line. I know I'll get there. I've got my incentives in my family and friends and coworkers who are rooting for me, and my own desire to succeed at this most intense of careers.
I just look forward to the day I've mastered these sectors. And for the day I can sit down and not feel like a pitbull's been chewing at the seat of my pants.
As I mentioned a few months ago, I'm in the middle of writing a novel. It's set largely aboard a fictional rigid airship during the early 20th century. Given the relatively obscure subject matter, it's been an interesting journey trying to get the operational and period details as correct as possible.
I've never written anything on this large a scale before. The biggest problem I've been having in writing historical fiction is not the "grand events", but the details that bind them together.
Let's say I'm writing a fictional story about the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Finding the overall information is easy. Heck, you can just grab it from Wikipedia. "On the night of 14 April 1912, during her maiden voyage, Titanic hit an iceberg and sank two hours and forty minutes later, early on 15 April 1912. The sinking resulted in the deaths of 1,517 people..." Great. Now you've got the general info.
However, what about the details? What did the passengers eat? Did the decks have names? What were period clothes made of? What kind of wood were the floors made of? What kind of music was popular at the time? How was royalty addressed? What books were being read? How were the engines operated? How many crew members would be on the bridge at any one time? What kind of slang was popular?
It's those kind of details that make a story come alive, I think. The kind of information that doesn't just tell about a place or time, but puts the reader right into the middle of it. They may seem unimportant on the surface, but I think their presence adds life to the story by creating a believable setting. That's what I'm trying to achieve.
My History's Got Gas
So, I've been trying to dig up as much stuff on rigid airships as I can.
A quick primer: a rigid airship (RA) differs from today's blimps by having their shape kept by an actual metal skeleton. On an RA, you have an exterior metal "shell" that's covered in fabric, and then inside you have individual gas cells which hold the lifting helium or hydrogen. A blimp's gas envelope keeps its shape using only gas pressure and a system of "ballonets" that inflate or deflate with regular air to keep the ship's form at different pressure altitudes. If you were to completely deflate a blimp, its envelope would collapse, where as an RA keeps its shape even if the gas is completely pumped out.
Another advantage of the RA is that any room within the hull that is not used for gas cells can be used for living quarters, storage, fuel, weapons, and more. With a blimp, you're more or less much limited to the control car gondola that hangs underneath the gas envelope, which limits your range and facilities.
There are also vessels classified as semi-rigid ships, which mix elements of both designs. In fact, the first the aircraft to overfly the North Pole was the semi-rigid airship Norge in 1926, designed by Umberto Nobile and operated by a crew of Italians and Norwegians. Heck of a story, that one. That ship's envelope had a metal keel and metal reinforcements for the nose and tail, but the remainder of the envelope's form was maintained through pressure. Nobile's subsequent ship, the Italia - also a semi-rigid - would meet its fate over the polar ice caps in 1928. What ensued was an Arctic survival story nearly as incredible as Ernest Shackleton's ordeal and escape from Antarctica over twenty years prior.
But, like I said, I've been focusing on rigid airship design. Below are some images of an RA under construction, where you can clearly see the internal skeletal structure as well as one of the internal spaces.
It's an era of aviation that not many people know about, or even really care about. Frankly, I find it fascinating. Everybody knows about the Zeppelin Hindenburg. "Oh, the humanity!" and all that. That was merely the end of the airship era, and so much came before that fateful day over Lakehurst, NJ.
My focus has been on military rigid airships. In the 1920's and 1930's, the United States Navy operated four enormous aerial vessels: the USS Shenandoah, the USS Los Angeles, the USS Macon, and the USS Akron. Of those four, only the Los Angeles survived; the rest were lost in crashes. The story of each ship and their eventual end actually reads like the Titanic's: avoidable and tragic.
One of the things I like about these vessels is that they really did operate like seagoing ships. No yoke or throttles. Instead, you had helmsmen and engine telegraphs.
The latter two - Macon and Akron - operated like flying aircraft carriers. They carried up to four or five Curtiss Sparrowhawk fighters in their hangars, and would launch them and recover them in-flight via a "flying trapeze" system. The fighters were used to increase their reconnaissance range. In operational use it was extraordinarily successful.
Doing My Homework
My research has spanned a ton of books and a few DVDs. However, when it comes to seeing real artifacts, there's only one place I can go: The Naval Aviation Museum.
I've written about it before, and here I go again: it's hands-down my favorite aviation museum.
This past Friday I went down there to get a close look at their exhibit. They have an excellent section on lighter-than-air (LTA) aircraft on the second floor, which covers both the aforementioned rigid airships, as well as the Navy's more modern blimps.
There are several display cases of artifacts from each of the RA's. The collections include such odd things as a piece of metal girder, radio antenna weight, and pieces of fabric stolen from the USS Shenandoah's crash site...
... to the skyhook from one of USS Macon's Sparrowhawk fighters, dredged up from the ocean depths...
... to the ship's helm and bell from the USS Los Angeles.
Later Airships and the Library
They also have some excellent displays on WWII and Cold War-era blimps, including the K-class which were used for anti-submarine convoy work. No blimp-escorted convoy ever had a ship sunk by an enemy submarine. These ships operated until the 1960's, when they were replaced by fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters.
They have an entire control car for a K-class hanging from the ceiling.
In addition, they have several parts from an N-class airship. While it was indeed a non-rigid airship, it had several metal structural components within its envelope, such as its nose cone, to provide support for load-bearing areas. They had the nose cone, ruddervator, and outrigger engine, amongst other things.
After I was done with the physical exhibits, I headed down to the Emil Buehler Library on the first floor. It's basically a single room with three walls covered in ceiling-height shelves of books.
I had poked around in there a few months ago, but it was long before I had any specific research interests. At the time, the only things that struck me were a 16th century samurai sword presented surrendered by a Japanese officer on Okinawa (freaking beautiful sword) and a sextant belonging to Amelia Earhart's navigator.
This time, however, I had a mission. I searched the shelves, and finally came across the airship section. It was small, but backed with goodness. A lot of their books appear to be donated by museum patrons. I found some real jewels in there, including several 1st editions dating back to the 1940's.
As I mentioned earlier, the reason for my research is that I'm trying to achieve both a proper "feel" for my novel, as well as technical accuracy.
Within these rare books, I found things like:
How the Sparrowhawk fighters airplanes were able to perform their reconnaissance and eventually locate to their mothership. In other words, how do you get your airplane back to an "airport" that's constantly moving laterally and vertically.
First hand accounts from the captain of the famous Graf Zeppelin (the first airship to circumnavigate the globe).
Proper ground handling techniques for airships.
I'm sure you guys must be going, "And that's interesting how?"
Think about The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy. How much of that book revolves around the concept of sonar? Does he go into great detail about every button, every knob, and every display in the USS Dallas' sonar room as it tracks Ramius' submarine? Of course not. He didn't set out to write a manual for a Los Angeles class SSN's sonar system. But the detail he does provide is as accurate as possible. He did a lot of research and learned a lot of things which may or may not have been applicable. Then he streamlined it and used only the parts that were relevant to the story.
That's what I'm intending to do: pick and choose from the research I've done and apply it where it's necessary to add to my story. That one hour sitting there in that small library filled so many gaps in the technical knowledge I've been seeking. I've also been able to track down several newer copies of the books I found via Amazon.com.
One last thing: I spoke with the librarian, and he mentioned that they also offer free research services. You simply e-mail them a question and they'll do your homework for you. He mentioned some of the queries people had sent in. Very obscure stuff, and these fine folks at the museum gave them the answers they were seeking.
An Added Bonus
You never know what you're going to find when you go to this museum.
As I walked outside to check out the outdoor displays, I saw a crowd gathering by the aircraft restoration annex. As I approached, I saw a huge crane, and one of the most beautiful P-38 specimens I've ever seen. What an amazing machine.
Turns out it was Lefty Gardner's old CAF bird White Lightning, bought and rebuilt by Red Bull after its 2001 crash in a field. They flew it in to Pensacola NAS and brought in a big-ass crane. They spent nearly an hour getting it over a fence and down a road so it could be loaded onto a barge and shipped to Germany. From Germany, it would be flown to Red Bull's HQ in Austria.
I shot some video of the plane-lift and cut it together. I'd never uploaded a widescreen HD clip to YouTube before, so I decided to use it as a test case.
So anyways - that was my Friday morning. Saw some neat artifacts, learned some useful shit, and saw a beautiful Air Force warbird at a Navy museum. A good start to a good day. :)
P.S. If you're interested in reading more about the airships, I highly recommend picking up The Great Dirigibles by John Toland. It's a reprint of a mid-20th century book that is packed full of first-person accounts from the survivors and crew of these vessels. It's extremely well written and really puts you in the middle of the action. It really allowed me to see what it would be like inside an 800 foot airship, a mile in the sky, as it's torn in half by a violent storm, coming apart and venting gas like a sieve.
Sunday night and it's slow. It's been slow all day, actually. I did a shift swap with my coworker this week - his Sunday for my Friday. I've never worked a Sunday before and it's been pretty quiet so far.
I get the page from downstairs - they want me in the TRACON. So, I amble downstairs, thinking I'm going to work another round of Flight Data, maybe do some training on the East sector, or count some traffic. Something quiet.
Not so much.
They tell me to open up the Whiting NAS sector. I walk over to the scope, and I see this:
There are about a dozen or more T-34s holding all over the place. They're all coming back home from their weekend cross countries. More are calling up. They all want in at the same time. But... Whiting Tower isn't open yet. So they're holding. And more keep calling up, wanting to get in.
I split off the sector and take control of it. I've never seen anything like this before, and I'm trying to kick my brain into gear and go from "Easy round of Flight Data" mode to "Sequence like a mofo" mode. So I just start looking at altitudes, and positions relative to final, and start doing the "He's #1, he's #2, he's #3, and he... well, shit, let's just see how this gels...." thing.
I've got two things going for me:
They're all VFR. None of this 3 miles or a thousand feet stuff. Of course, once they're cleared for the approach I will need the 3 miles in between.
They're all the same type of aircraft. It's not like I'm sequencing a 757 with a Cessna 172.
I also get some contradicting messages regarding the approach requests, where I end up thinking they're expecting PAR approaches to get in. After some digging around, it turns out that's not the case - the tower wants them all on the TACAN 32 approach (the red line on the graphic above). The long and short of it is that I end up telling "all aircraft" that they can expect first the PAR approach, then the ASR approach, and then - finally - they can expect the TACAN 32 approach. By the third transmission, I bet the pilots were thinking "Oh boy... what's next? The ILS? The GPS?"
This is a heck of a Super Bowl Sunday night. I've got a sky full of Navy pilots wanting to get down to watch the Super Bowl, the game's already started, and I've got my hands tied waiting for the "all clear" from Whiting Tower. Nothing I can do now but wait.
In the meantime, more T-34s show up, requesting to land. Into the VFR holding pattern they go. Not much I can do with them now.
Kickoff
At last, Whiting Tower calls and asks for them to come in.
I start rolling them in one after another. As all the guys closest to the final are cleared, I start bringing in the others from up north and the ones that are holding directly over the field. I don't want there to be any gaps. I also get a blanket point out from the East sector, so I can borrow some of his airspace in case I need to run someone wide.
One of the tricks for tightening things up is to point aircraft directly at one another. I don't mean head on, of course, but like this:
If you have two aircraft at comparable speeds and over three miles apart, just aim aircraft #2 at aircraft #1's position, #3 at #2's position, and #4 at #3's position. By the time #2 makes the turn and gets to #1's former position, #1 will be long gone. It keeps your final from getting strung out too far.
The ones to the north are stacked pretty high. I develop a flow, where the further south I vector them, the lower I descend them. Basically, I'm stepping them down towards the final.
I give the ones that are stacked directly on top of each other divergent headings and descend them to the approach altitude of 1700, or 2200 if I need them to cross over another aircraft. I also open up holes in my sequence so that the Pensacola sector can feed me a couple more that are waiting to the south outside my airspace.
One of my coworkers plugs in next to me, giving me an extra pair of eyes. He works Sundays and has seen the Sunday night rush before a few times. According to him, the last one he worked was all IFR pickups, with the tower requiring PAR approaches. PAR approaches require each aircraft to be set on its own special frequency, or buttons as we call them, of which we only have 6. With this many aircraft, you're constantly trying to keep tabs of which buttons are in use. Not a good time. Thankfully, it's beautiful VFR out there.
All the pilots are on the ball tonight too. Sometimes, you get one or two pilots who just don't respond quickly enough. When you're building a final, a repeated approach clearance, a delay of five or ten seconds, or two or three wasted "how do you hear?" transmissions can throw things out of whack quickly. But tonight, everybody's listening up and doing as they're asked. I only had to break one out who took a 040 heading instead of a 140 (I probably missed the readback). I just worked him out west for a few miles and sequenced him right back in.
Eventually, the last of the stragglers make it down. In just forty-five minutes, it's all over.
Post-Game Analysis
Afterwards, as I'm recombining the sector back over onto our East sector, I'm doing a bit of self-critique. I could have confirmed the approach type earlier with the tower. I could have gotten a couple of the aircraft down more quickly. Overall, I'm happy with how it worked out. The final stayed pretty tight the entire time and I got them in as fast as I could.
So that's how I spent the first quarter of the Super Bowl. Definitely one of the most intense sessions I've worked so far on my own. Normally, you don't see a lot of heavy sequencing at Whiting. Once I got over the initial "oh crap", I was actually enjoying myself. It was a good challenge. Or, as one of my coworkers put it jokingly, a baptism by fire.
A few days before Christmas, a couple of pilots came to visit us at the TRACON. This was the crew of the DHL-owned Airborne Express DC-9 that has been parked next to the TRACON since I've been here.
This DC-9 was a staple here, our only real cargo operation aside from the half dozen light cargo haulers that come in and out everyday. Every night at the same time, trucks would line up to transfer their packages onto the airplane. A short while later, those old turbofans would spool up, splitting the night sky with an ear piercing whine. The big yellow bird would roll out and be on its way. They were usually the last airliner out the door.
Come morning, they would be the first ones in. More trucks would be waiting to pick up their cargo at daybreak. Afterwards, ground crews would break out the airplane shampoo and scrub the soot off the tail left by the old, dirty engines.
In early November 2008, I read that DHL was cutting 9500 jobs. They'd had some trouble over the years, with competition from UPS/FedEx as well as from internal strife with their new German owners. Since the 2003 merger with DHL, many of the kinks had apparently been ironed out and they were building new business. However, the economic realities of Fall 2008 had turned against them. "Survival of the fittest", as they say.
I wondered how and when this would effect the guys that flew out of here.
A month later, amongst the holiday cookies and delicious sandwiches they brought, was a card the crew had made out to the controllers of the TRACON. In carefully written script, the captain thanked us for all of our work, and added sadly that as of January 31, 2009 the AbEx DC-9s of Pensacola would be no more. DHL was closing up shop in the United States and pulling out of its agreement with AbEx. With no buyers for the old airframes, they were flying the distinct yellow airplanes out to the desert and scrapping them. No longer would I be greeted on the way into work by that yellow tail poking out over the fence. The captain had been flying "the -9" out of here for 23 years.
As December became January, the DC-9s continued flying. I'd almost forgotten the news about DHL. However, the effects of the economic downturn were plain in this small city. Small businesses of all types were closing down. Strip malls all over the place were vacant. People were holding on tightly to the money they had. The only Cuban restaurant in town shuttered its doors a few weeks ago. Linens 'n' Things failed to my wife's dismay. Circuit City announced its liquidation. Walmart and Amazon.com got busier. It seemed as if at every major intersection there was a guy holding up a bankruptcy or liquidation sale sign with "50%" and "70%" emblazoned on them in neon orange and yellow. The efforts and jobs of many were simply disappearing.
Last Friday, I came into work, and the old Douglas DC-9 was gone. In its place sat a tiny, little King Air.
How much things have changed in only three months.
November 2008
January 2009 Hopefully the remaining eleven months of 2009 will show a shift for the better.
This is a pretty neat time-lapse video someone took of the USAir 1549 A320 being fished from the Hudson. It kind of reminds me of those "crane games" for kids you see in supermarkets and bowling alleys, except instead of a stuffed purple giraffe you're getting a slightly used 140 foot Airbus.
I know we're reaching media saturation with this, so I'll just say that everyone involved did a fantastic job getting those people off there. It's not a "miracle", but simply people keeping their heads cool, properly executing their training, and working together.
Vacations have one big problem: they go by way too quickly.
We just got back from Miami. As much as my wife and I love heading down to see our family and friends, the drive sucks - plain and simple. 12 hours of monotony and tolls, and right at the end you enter the madness of Miami traffic. It's just incredible that you can drive for 12 hours, and still be within the same state. Other than California, Montana, and Texas, I doubt there's many other states with that much straight-line distance.
Readers of this blog know that when I was asked to make my state selection for the FAA, I chose only Florida, hoping that I'd get one of the many, many facilities within one evening's drive - 4 or 6 hours - of Miami. I found it extremely ironic that they placed me in the one Florida facility that was 12 hours away. While I love living here, when it comes time to drive down to Miami to visit it becomes much less ironic and far more of a pain in the ass. That "irony" manifests itself in a 24 hour round trip, 1300 miles on my only car, six full tanks of gas, and two full days of leave taken up by just the drive.
We chose to head out of here at 3am, so we could arrive in Miami in daylight and spend some time with family after we got there, instead of diving right into bed. While my wife slept the first leg (about 5 hours), I kept myself entertained.
Before we left, I had bought a mounting bracket for my Archos 504 media player. This old player's got a big, beautiful 4.5" screen and 80GB of storage, so - along with all my music - I'd loaded half a season of TV show episodes on it. I installed it on the right side of the steering wheel. On the left, I put the GPS mount for my Lowrance 500 Airmap (which died last year), but dropped my smartphone in it instead. On the cell phone, I loaded up Google Maps and used it as my main navigation source for the trip. I also bought a power converter with two USB slots for my car cigarette lighter, so instead of having multiple power adapters strung all over, I just had two thin USB cables that were easily contained and kept out of the way.
Here's what it looked like at 3:30am, on our way out from Pensacola on I-10. This is the worst part, by the way. The I-10 eastbound stretch is mile after mile of mind-numbing nothingness.
I know people will say that's unsafe. Firstly, it's not like I'm watching the thing the whole time. I really only glance at it periodically, normally when I hear a scene change so I know where the characters are talking (like an office, a headquarters, a restaurant, etc.). Secondly, having it in within my peripheral vision allows me to keep my eyes on the road without having to look down and be distracted. Thirdly, that little device helped keep me completely awake and passed the first 5 hours in no time flat.
Oh look... three hours into the drive and the sun is now just rising... LOL.
In general, I'm a good multitasker in the car. When you live in Miami and are forced to spend hours a day in your car staring at the rear of the car in front of you, you quickly find a way to entertain yourself.
Most of your drive is spent like the following photo. I took this about 6pm on December 30th on Biscayne Boulevard. Note that at least some of the lights are green, yet no one's going anywhere.
Heck, in the days before I had a cell phone, I used to carry a drum machine/synthesizer with me that was about the size of a paperback book (Yamaha QY70). I memorized the layout of the buttons and keys so I could navigate it all by feel. I once wrote the score for a friend's student film over a couple of days' worth of traffic, just creating beats and melodies.
I just do it carefully, and always keep my head up and eyes on the road.
Lightweight Heavies
It's been over a year since I'd seen an aircraft with more than two jet engines and bigger than a "large". Every single airliner that flies into Pensacola is a CRJ or ERJ regional jet, an MD88, a B717, a B738, or a B752. All narrow-bodies, all the time. Heck, yesterday was the first time I'd had to say "Caution wake turbulence" in a long, long time.
As we entered the Miami city limits via the Florida Turnpike, I looked up, and there was a Boeing 747. Then an Airbus A300. Then an Airbus A340. All this heavy metal just floating on into MIA. It was cool seeing these big guys in action. I'd grown up around them and spent plenty of time in them, but it
I'd hoped to have some time to visit Miami TRACON. Unfortunately, the timing didn't pan out. The last time I'd been there was four months before I got hired by the FAA. Seeing it now as a semi-certified controller would have been quite a different perspective. I could have asked more informed questions, at least better ones than "What are those dashed lines leading to the airport?" :)
Gamer's Delight
I'm a fairly avid gamer. I've always loved video games, both playing them and creating them. I'm not a fan of World of Warcraft or any of those other MMORPGs, but I enjoy good adventure and action games, and of course flight simulators. I'm constantly amazed by how much games and consoles have progressed since I first started out on the Atari and the Apple II (both of which we still have at my parents' house, and both of which still work flawlessly).
One of the things we picked up over the Holidays was an Xbox 360. That thing is amazing. We already have a Nintendo Wii that's been overall great, but I'm frankly tired of having to compromise graphic quality and usability. The online component of the Nintendo Wii alone makes me want to throw it out the window, with its poor integration and those ridiculous "friend codes".
Microsoft may be many horrible things, but they've really nailed the Xbox interface and online portion. It simply works beautifully and intuitively. The online gaming portion, Xbox Live makes it so easy to connect with other friends and players. I have friends that often use its voice chat in lieu of a phone. I've also linked the console up with my desktop computer at home via TVersity, a network media streaming program. Basically, I have all my music and downloaded videos on my computer, but the Xbox can read it and play them all back flawlessly over the network. I've also got the Xbox set up with my Netflix account for streaming videos.
As far as specific games, my wife and I have been playing Prince of Persia and Mass Effect. Both are fantastic in completely different ways - PoP for its puzzle-solving and illustrative art style, and ME for its enormous world and sprawling story. I've also been playing a few shooters, such as Call of Duty: World at War and Gears of War. World at War is hella fun. Nothing more relaxing than to come home from a long day at work and shoot some bloke in the head with a virtual Winchester trench gun. :)
I also managed to lose my Guitar Hero: World Tour / Rock Band 2 virginity over the vacation. Between the two games, I found Rock Band far more realistic and fun. I play guitar and bass in real life, so I didn't mess around with the guitar controllers. I did try the vocals for a bit (me doing Beastie Boys... LOL), but mostly played drums. The drums in Rock Band actually sync up with the music, while the Guitar Hero drums are more tuned with the visuals.
My first time at the mic. Yay. "Watcha Want?"
Back in the Groove
After a great few days, now we're back home, I'm back at work, and the Navy's ramping up again. My first couple days back have been pretty good, with only a couple rough spots here or there. Between the holiday traffic slowdown and my vacation, I hadn't talked to an airplane in nearly 2 weeks. I was definitely shaking some rust off.
I'm looking forward to 2009. I'm bringing some new energy to the plate. I'm eager - but not unrealistically eager - to get certified on the Pensacola bank of scopes. I just hope things start clicking more. I've identified several of my problems, such as working speed, and am doing my best to get those sorted.
Anyhow, that's it for now. I've some fresh all-ATC posts in the works. One of them's actually based on something that happened to me today. They'll be up soon.
I've always enjoyed writing, but the NaNoWriMo novel writing contest really kicked me into gear. As I was working on the novel, I started looking around at other venues for shorter fiction. I found out about a new online magazine that was taking submissions, and decided to give it a shot.
The story itself is a Christmas-themed steampunk piece, and it's the first short fiction I've written in nearly 15 years. It's a style that I don't normally use - written from the perspective of a small child - so it was a challenge to tone down the vocabulary and still get across what needed saying. It was a lot of fun to create and provided a good learning environment for the edit/rewrite process.
I'm not sure exactly where I picked up these bad phraseology habits, but I'm trying really hard to break them.
Proper Grammar, Improper Places "N132MM, traffic at yourtwo o'clock..." "USC395, contact Mobile Approach on 118.5." "RN645, radar vectors for the TACAN 14 approach, North Whiting." "EGF888, the airport will be at your 12 o'clock, one two miles. Report it in sight."
Articles, possessive adjectives, and prepositions work beautifully when you're talking to people casually in person or on the phone. I can't imagine calling up my wife and telling her, "Sweetie, me, dinner, chicken." Or calling up a friend saying, "Dude, me, hang out." Yeah, that would garner me some odd replies.
But on a radio frequency, they just clutter up precious space and sound unprofessional.
The Murder of Roger (Ackroyd) Deep down in my soul, I must believe that every pilot out there is named Roger. Why? Because I seem to call them that regardless of what they're doing, what they are, or what they want.
There are only a few times when it's appropriate, usually when you really have nothing else to add. For example, lets say Citrus 453 checks in eight miles outside of my airspace with, "Pensacola Approach, Citrus 453 at 11,000 with Tango." He is outside of my airspace, so I can't descend or turn him. He also has the latest ATIS code, so he knows what runway and approach to expect. I literally can't do a thing with him. In that case, I can reply with, "Citrus 453, Pensacola Approach, roger."
However, I have a habit of injecting a "roger" into "working" transmissions where it simply doesn't belong. And it makes me sound like the n00b that I am.
"Citrus 453, Pensacola Approach, roger, descend and maintain 6000, radar vectors VOR runway 8 approach." "BB645, Pensacola Approach, roger, squawk 0123 and ident." "VV7E123, roger, I have your request."
So, I'm trying to flush poor Roger from the majority of my working transmissions. He has no place there, so he needs to be offed.
BTW, if you haven't read the Agatha Christie novel whose title I punned, it's a good one. Definitely one of her most controversial works. Do NOT read the Wikipedia article on it, for it spoils the ending.
Radar Contact... Again An aircraft has been cleared for a practice approach. He is handed off to the tower and switched to their frequency. Once the approach is completed, the tower hands him back to me and he is switched back to my frequency. He went through two radar handoffs and remained within radar coverage the entire time.
So why, when he comes up on my frequency for his next approach, do I insist on saying, "VV7E123, Pensacola Departure, radar contact, fly heading 040, radar vectors ILS 17 approach."
Radar contact was never lost. He was never unidentified. He didn't disappear mysteriously. So why the heck do I insist on re-identifying aircraft that are positively identified?
Self-critiquing is a good thing. People who get complacent eventually get sloppy and I personally think people should always strive to be better at what they do. Sometimes, that starts with the little things.
A lot of these phraseology hiccups occur when it's slow - and therefore, when I'm more complacent and relaxed. However, slow periods are the times I should be perfecting my phraseology. When the pedal hits the metal, I'll be doing everything I did during the slow times - just at higher speed and in higher quantity. Every second I waste with unnecessary words will steal time needed for other ATC functions. Using non-standard phraseology will also undoubtedly increase the occurrence of that wonderful, frustrating phrase: "Say again?"
I love telling stories in all sorts of mediums. As Escape the Clouds, I've released three albums of steampunk-inspired music. I'm also a published author, with around two dozen fiction and non-fiction pieces in print.
. It's a beautifully filmed documentary that specifically relates the history of California's Van Nuys Airport, but generally relates the importance of an airport to its surrounding area. It's told largely through interviews with pilots, historians, controllers, and busness owners who rely on the airport. The cinematography is fantastic, including perfectly composed shots of warbirds, biplanes, aerobatic aircraft, bizjets, and more. I had the most serious case of 
, a documentary that came out last year about two Navy pilots wanting to become F-14 Tomcat fighter pilots. Each pilot has their own specific issues. One is a woman, which of course invites all of the "man's world" stigmas. The other is a guy whose callsign is "Faceshot", named as such because he was shot in the face as a teenager and recovered, but now has trouble convincing doctors he is medically qualified to fly. It follows both pilots through their dogfight training, carrier qualification training, and eventual deployment to Iraq.
